The huge popularity of ultra-mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has driven demand for miniaturized electronics, and this has encouraged the use of relatively tiny MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) microphones.
Boston-based Vesper is pioneering a new type of MEMS microphone, a piezoelectric MEMS microphone, as opposed to the more conventional capacitive MEMS microphone. Vesper claims this enables a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), for greatly improved audio quality and sensitivity.